Kirsters Baish- Syndicated Opinion Columnist
California Democratic Representative Maxine Waters has acted like a vicious bully in the past, but she seemed to get a little taste of her own medicine during a Tuesday House Financial Services Committee hearing.
Conservative Tribune reports:
The trouble started for Waters when Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who’d spent the afternoon being grilled by Democrats, tried to remind Waters that the hearing was supposed to end at 5:15 p.m. so Mnuchin could make a scheduled meeting with an official from the Bahrain government, according to Fox News.
It didn’t end well — especially not for Waters.
Mnuchin stated, “I’ve sat here for over three hours and 15 minutes, I’ve told you I’ll come back. I just don’t believe we’re sitting here negotiating when I come back. We’ll follow up with your office. How long would you like me to come back for next time? I’ve told I’ll accommodate you.”
Waters, who is also chair of the Financial Services Committee, was clearly unhappy.
“This is a new way and it’s a new day. And it’s a new chair. And I have the gavel at this point. If you wish to leave, you may,” she said.
Take a look at the altercation below:
Rep. Maxine Waters: "This is a new way and it's a new day. And it's a new chair. And I have the gavel."
WATCH: Treasury Sec. Mnuchin, Maxine Waters get into fiery exchange over length of hearing. https://t.co/4KEJIcVlO7 pic.twitter.com/pIktWZkl57
— The Hill (@thehill) April 10, 2019
When Mnuchin asked Waters to clarify if the hearing had been dismissed, she would not give him a straight answer.
“If you’d wish to keep me here so that I don’t have my important meeting and continue to grill me, then we can do that. I will cancel my meeting and I will not be back here,” Mnuchin stated. “I will be very clear if that’s the way you’d like to have this relationship.”
“The secretary has agreed to stay to hear all of the rest of the members,” Waters answered, speaking to the other members on the committee. Then she spoke directly to Mnuch. “Please cancel your meeting and respect our time.”
“Please dismiss everybody. I believe you’re supposed to take the gavel and bang it,” Mnuchin stated.
She wasn’t happy about his response.
“Please do not instruct me as to how I am to conduct this committee,” Waters stated.
This really didn’t make Waters look good.
Conservative Tribune reports that her “poisonous relationship with the Trump White House goes deeper than her recurring calls to impeach President Donald Trump. This is the woman who, like a true street bully, infamously urged supporters last summer to form angry mobs around members of Trump’s cabinet in public and ‘push back on them.’”
